Posts Tagged ‘Colm Tóibín’

Everything you ever wanted to know about Saoirse Ronan but where afraid to ask

Screen Shot 2015-11-17 at 10.25.07 AMBy Richard Crouse – Metro Canada

The first time I interviewed Saoirse Ronan she was fifteen years old and the veteran of six movies.

I had seen her in Atonement, where she played a Scottish teenager who accuses her sister’s boyfriend of a crime he didn’t commit. Next I saw her as the English daughter of a psychic who tries to con Harry Houdini in Death Defying Acts. Then came roles in the sci-fi City of Ember and The Lovely Bones both featuring flawless American accents.

I had always admired her performances and as I walked into the interview suite I congratulated her on the film.

“T’anks pure much,” she said with an Irish lilt that could charm the label off a bottle of Jameson Whiskey.

It was the first time I had heard her natural accent and confirmed what I already knew, that she was a chameleon with a propensity for accents that could give Meryl Streep a run for her money.

Since then she’s played everything from the title character in Hanna, a blonde, blue-eyed killing machine (with a German accent) to a spirited Polish orphan in The Way Back and an American girl injected with a parasitic extra-terrestrial soul in The Host.

This weekend in Brooklyn she drops the drawls to play an Irish girl who immigrates to New York in the 1950s. She’s 21 now and as one of the great faces in movies she can speak volumes with a look. Here, as a girl whose body is in Brooklyn but heart lies in Ireland, her melancholy and homesickness is so real you can reach out and touch it. Call her Little Meryl if you like, but there is no denying the power of her work.

So if you’re not familiar with Ronan, here’s Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Saoirse Ronan But Where Afraid to Ask.

How do you pronounce her name? Saoirse is an Irish or Scottish name meaning freedom roughly pronounced SEER-shə. “I get very confused about my name all the time,” she said in a recent sit-down. “Sometimes I look at it when I’m writing it down for people and I go, ‘This is actually a ridiculous spelling of a name.’”

In what part of Ireland was she born? Despite her Irish accent, she was actually born in The Bronx in 1994.  “(My parents) went to New York in the ’80s. There was a really bad recession in Ireland at the time. A lot of young people went to New York because that’s our trek, that’s our journey. The Irish always go to New York or somewhere on the East Coast.” Monica Ronan and Paul Ronan lived in NY for eleven years in total, moving back to County Carlow, Ireland when Saoirse was three years old. “This film is more than just a really lovely movie to be involved in with great writers and a great character and all that. It’s my heritage.”

Can she beat me up? Probably. To play teenage assassin Hanna she studied knife fighting, stick fighting, martial arts and learned how to shoot a gun. She performed most of her own stunts in the film and says if she was ever offered the action-star role of James Bond she would happily accept. “That tux? I could totally rock it.”

That’s all the info we have space for today, but really the only thing you need to know about Ronan is that she is one of the best actors of her generation.

BROOKLYN: 4 ½ STARS. “there is no denying the power of Ronan’s work.”

“Brooklyn,” a new film starring Saoirse Ronan as an Irish girl who immigrates to New York in the 1950s, asks a simple question: Is home where the heart is or where the marriage licence is?

Ronan is Eilis Lacey a young woman from Enniscorthy, County Wexford in southeast Ireland. Her sister Rose (Fiona Glascott) realizes there isn’t much in the small villager for her and arranges, through the church, passage to New York with a job and a room in a boarding house on the other end. “I can’t buy you a future,” she says. “I can’t buy you the life you deserve.”

The shy young woman takes a while to warm up to her new surroundings, but a lively bunch at her rooming house—overseen by the irrepressible Mrs. Keough (Julie Walters)—and a love interest in the form of Tony (Emory Cohen), a sweet Brooklyn plumber, bring a smile to her face for the first time since leaving home.

When tragedy strikes the couple secretly wed, promising to stay faithful while she travels to Ireland to be with family during a tough time. Once there she discovers her newly acquired confidence and ability—plus the attention of a handsome young man (Domhnall Gleeson)—make it difficult to leave Ireland and return to the States and her husband.

Written by Nick Hornby (from a novel by Colm Tóibín) “Brooklyn” is a heartfelt coming-of-age journey that skilfully avoids any trace of mawkishness or sentimentality. A sharp script and John Crowley’s no nonsense direction are in part responsible for the movie’s tone, but the film’s beating heart is Saoirse Ronan’s remarkable performance.

As one of the great faces in movies she can speak volumes with a look, and here, as a girl whose body is in New York but heart lies in Ireland, her melancholy and homesickness is so real you can reach out and touch it. Call her Little Meryl if you like, but there is no denying the power of her work.

She’s accompanied by a strong cast including Walters—who manages to make lines like, “A giddy girl is every bit as evil as a slothful man,” sound like Henny Youngman one liners—and Cohen, who as Tony a character as sweet and romantic as he is shy and polite.

“Brooklyn” is a movie about decisions that makes all the right decisions. Some situations may be familiar but Ronan’s exemplarily work helps us ignore the familiar tropes as she milks every bit of emotion from a profoundly touching story.